Why Don’t We Mourn Anymore? A Culture That Forgot How to Weep
- grant p
- Jul 6, 2025
- 3 min read
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” – Matthew 5:4
Jesus called mourners blessed. But in today’s culture, few of us know how to mourn at all.
We don’t weep in public.
We don’t wail at funerals.
We don’t cry for our sins, our children, or the pain of the world.
Why not?
What happened to us?
We Live in a Culture That No Longer Knows How to Mourn
The disappearance of mourning didn’t happen all at once. It has been a slow erosion, influenced by deep cultural shifts that rewrote the meaning of sorrow, death, love, and loss.
Here are the major turning points:
The Enlightenment (1600s–1700s): Grief Lost Its Mystery
The Enlightenment elevated reason above all else. Emotions were seen as irrational, untrustworthy, even dangerous.
Sorrow became something to solve, not something to sit with.
Death became a medical problem, not a sacred passage.
Grief was quietly moved to the margins.
🕯️ We stopped kneeling before suffering. We started managing it.
The Industrial Revolution (1700s–1800s): Grief Lost Its Time
As society mechanized, everything accelerated. The human heart no longer set the rhythm—factories and clocks did.
Mourning became an inconvenience. A luxury.
People were expected to “move on” quickly so the machine of society could keep going.
🕯️ Grief was no longer honored with time. It became something to hurry through.
Victorian Moralism (1800s): Grief Lost Its Voice
In the 19th century, emotional restraint became a moral ideal. Stoicism was seen as strength. Public weeping was frowned upon—especially for women, who were dismissed as hysterical if they showed too much feeling.
🕯️ Lament became private.
Loud sorrow became shameful.
World Wars I and II (1914–1945): Grief Became Too Much to Bear
The death toll from two global wars was staggering. Families were shattered. Many never saw their loved ones again. The world grieved in silence.
Fathers came home and never spoke of what they saw.
Mothers carried lifetimes of unspoken mourning.
🕯️ And a new cultural rule was born: “Don’t talk about it.”
Modern Psychology & Medication (1950s–Today): Grief Became a Disorder
Grief was medicalized. Emotional pain was classified, measured, and often medicated. If you mourned too long, you might be diagnosed with something.
Our deepest sorrows were increasingly treated as problems to fix—rather than sacred wounds to carry with God.
🕯️ We started labeling what Scripture called blessed.
The Digital Age (1990s–Now): Grief Lost Its Space
Smartphones and social media have all but erased stillness. We scroll through death announcements. We text condolences. We escape into distraction before the tears can fall.
Every possible moment of quiet—where grief might rise—can now be drowned in entertainment.
🕯️ We stopped feeling.
We started numbing.
What We Lost When We Stopped Mourning
We lost something holy.
To mourn is to:
Love someone enough to cry
Feel something deeply enough to break
Long for heaven with enough hunger that your chest aches
Grieve over sin not out of shame, but because you miss God
To mourn is to weep with Christ.
At Lazarus’s tomb. Over the city that would not repent. In Gethsemane under the weight of love.
Can We Reclaim It?
Yes. But not quickly.
To reclaim mourning, we must:
Recover stillness: create space where sorrow can rise without shame.
Recover community: make room for each other’s tears.
Recover prayer: pour out grief before the Lord in psalms, silence, and sacred lament.
Recover love: because only love gives birth to holy mourning.
Because Mourning Is Not Weakness—It’s Love Fully Felt.
And in Christ, it is not the end of the story.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Not by a fix.
Not by distraction.
But by the Comforter Himself.
Come, Lord Jesus. Teach us how to weep again.
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